Quotes about greed (353 quotes, page 4)

“The greed of others could not co-exist with the selflessness of the Penan with their gentle humour and generous hearts.”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 19
Context: But these quiet people, in their animal skin clothes with their diet of sago, were not to be left alone to wander through the lush jungles, living off the land, leaving no mark when they moved on, teaching their children the secrets of the forest. The greed of others could not co-exist with the selflessness of the Penan with their gentle humour and generous hearts.

Heart

“They flock together like ants, hurry east and west, run north and south. Some are mighty, some humble. Some are aged, some young. They have places to go, houses to return to. At night they sleep, in the morning get up. But what does all this activity mean? There is no ending to their greed for long life, their grasping for for profit.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

74
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Life , Age , Sleep , Housing

“Greed is a sickness of the mind. The more one hoards, the more greed increases. Giving with no expectation eliminates greed.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Desire: (p.23)
The Path to Enlightenment is not a Highway, 1996

“This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The God-Man : The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an Interpretation of His Silence and Spiritual Teaching (1964) by Charles Benjamin Purdom, p. 187.
General sources
Context: This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies. This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one to live it.

Life , Death , Fear , Anger

“Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Next War".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Context: Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony...

Rage

“Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the Kali Yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening.
Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time.
Otherwise, ours is an old, old story with an interesting new wrinkle. Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed. The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically. Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life.

Fear , History , Hell

“The victims of greed and exploitation will never get justice solely by relying upon the vision and generosity of those who hold power and seek their own gain.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

The Personality of Jesus (1932)
Context: The victims of greed and exploitation will never get justice solely by relying upon the vision and generosity of those who hold power and seek their own gain. Power is blinding and corrupting and causes the slave-owner to imagine that it is his duty to perpetuate slavery. The victims of imperialism, in a world where national egotism and greed are rampant, must resort to coercive action if they are to secure freedom and justice.

Justice

“The events of this story are morally indefensible. But the greed that motivated the human actors—excluding of course the slaves themselves—was so overwhelming as to be irresistible. It is impossible for us today who condemn the slave trade to imagine any effective opposition to it in the 17th century. A parallel in our time would be the unstoppable trade in narcotics. We can't stop the supply because we can't stop the demand. To the limitless demand for labor in the new world the slave trade was a limitless response. Like drugs today, laws against it were powerless, because the profits were so great.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Opposition to the slave trade did come in time, in the principles of the American Revolution, but not before slavery had formed deep roots in the economy and polity of the United States. The foreign slave trade was outlawed by the United States in 1808, and it was made a capital crime in 1820, but the trade continued right up until the Civil War. It is good however to remind ourselves that no black slave was sold to a white slave trader, on the west coast of Africa, who had not already been enslaved by a black African. Slavery was an equal opportunity employer!
2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

World , Law , Imagination , Motivation

“What the eye delights in, no longer dictates
My greed to enjoy”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Experience"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: What the eye delights in, no longer dictates
My greed to enjoy: boys, grass, the fenced-off
deer.
It leaves those figures that distantly play
On the horizon's rim: they sign their peace, in games.

“Greed puts out the sun.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5 “Rejoining” (p. 281)

Sun

“Most wars are fought for greed, but we are luckier here— we fight for our lives and the lives of the people we love.”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 9

War

“Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Life

“It is greed that makes us human as it could be for good or bad.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

"Humanity", Ch.VI "Resources: Need and Desires", Part II

Bad luck , Making love

“The technology for using base motives to productive economic effect is reasonably well understood. Indeed, the history of the twentieth century encourages the thought that the easiest way to generate productivity in a modern society is by nourishing the motives of which I spoke earlier, namely, those of greed and fear. But we should never forget that greed and fear are repugnant motives. Who would propose running a society on the basis of such motives, and thereby promoting the psychology to which they belong, if they were not known to be effective, if they did not have the instrumental value which is the only value that they have?”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

IV. Is the Ideal Feasible?
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

History , Forgetting , Motivation , Way

“Akbar had prohibited enslavement and sale of women and children of peasants who had defaulted in payment of revenue. He knew, as Abul Fazl says, that many evil hearted and vicious men either because of ill-founded suspicion or sheer greed, used to proceed to villages and mahals and sack them.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Abu Fazl quoted by Lal, K. S. (2012). Indian muslims: Who are they.

Children , Heart , Evil , Women

“Your leaders worshipped the greed devil when they sold their votes and influence to spread bad stuff; they worshipped the power devil when they valued votes over the health of the planet; they made a pretence of mercy and justice by advocating human rights while they sucked up to dominance devils whose law was torture and whose rule was the enslavement of women.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

The Visitor in Ch. 44 : the visitor, pp. 461-462
The Visitor (2002)

Justice , Law , Bad luck , Health

“Each race creates its own devils. You had so many that they specialized. Devils of racial hatred, devils of greed and violence. Devils who killed their own people in orgies of blood. Devils who bombed clinics, devils who bombed school buses, devils who bombed other devils. I got to know every one of them by name. As soon as I arrived, I sent my monsters out to kill them all. They had tarnished my reputation, and though I have lavished much care on mankind, vengeance is mine.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor, p. 458
The Visitor (2002)

School , People

“I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence. On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Central Council (15 March 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102655
Leader of the Opposition

Faith , Freedom , Personality , Children

“The background to the war, my studious Homomdan pal, is three thousand years of ruthless oppression, cultural imperialism, economic exploitation, systematic torture, sexual tyranny and the cult of greed ingrained almost to the point of genetic inheritability.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 3 “Infra Dawn” (p. 66)

War

“For their riches the monasteries came to be coveted by the Turkish invaders. They became special targets of the invaders’ greed. The Turks killed a large number of Buddhist monks in Nalanda, although some of the monks managed to escape to Nepal and Tibet.”

Ram Sharan Sharma (1919–2011) historian

R.S. Sharma, Ancient India, NCERT, New Delhi, 1996, p. 112.

“What kind of society isn’t structured on greed?… So the problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm. It seems to me that the great virtue of capitalism is that it’s that kind of system. Because under capitalism, the power of any one individual over his fellow man is relatively small.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

Problem

“We are going to transform this country and finally create an economy and a government which works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. The underlying principles of our government will not be greed, hatred and lies. It will not be racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and religious bigotry. This campaign will be based on justice—on economic justice, on social justice, on racial justice, on environmental justice.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Quoted in: Bernie Sanders kicks off 2020 campaign in Brooklyn, The New York Post, Khristina Narizhnaya and Eileen AJ Connelly, https://nypost.com/2019/03/02/bernie-sanders-kicks-off-2020-campaign-in-brooklyn/ (2 March 2019)
2010s, 2019, March 2019

Justice , Country

“The stock prices of massive pharmaceutical companies tumbled because we are pushing to make health care a human right for every American. Corporate greed has no place in health care.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/SenSanders (24 April 2019)
2010s, 2019, April 2019

Making love , Health

“We are set irrevocably, I believe, on a path that will take us to the stars—unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed, we destroy ourselves first.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 25, “The Amniotic Universe” (p. 368)

Star , Stupidity

“Pray, O pray to God, dear friends, if you are not already asses — that he will cause you to become asses… There is none who praiseth not the golden age when men were asses: they knew not how to work the land. One knew not how to dominate another, one understood no more than another; caves and caverns were their refuge; they were not so well covered nor so jealous nor were they confections of lust and of greed. Everything was held in common.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cabal of the Cheval Pegasus (1585)

God , Age , Men

“While 800,000 Americans wait and work without pay, the administration bows to mortgage industry lobbyists. The blatant corruption and greed of an administration who puts banks above people is the root cause of our broken system.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

(12 January 2019) https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1084199593926189057
Twitter account, January 2019

Waiting , People

“For too long, gentlemen by way of abuses that one can never too strongly accuse of having taken pace because of our lack of underrstanding and ignorance - for every long time, I say - we have been victims of your greed and your avarice. Under the blows of your barbarous whip we have accumulated for you the treasures you enjoy in this colony; the human race has suffered to asee with what barbarity you have treated men like yourself…”

Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) Leader of the Haitian Revolution

Letter to the General Assembly (1792)

Way , Time , Suffering , Men

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation.”

James Gustave Speth (1942) American environmental lawyer and advocate

[Crockett, Daniel, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html/Nature, Connection Will Be the Next Big Human Trend, Huffington Post, Aug 22, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20160105052014/http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html, January 5, 2016, yes]

Selfishness , Loss , Problem , Thinking

“Do you ask me whom I have conquered? Neither the Persians, nor the far-off Medes, nor any warlike race that lies beyond the Dahae; not these, but greed, ambition, and the fear of death that has conquered the conquerors of the world.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXI: On the supreme good

World , Fear , Death

“The less a necessity naturally exists for individual greed and rapacity, the more dangerous to, and obtrusive upon society it becomes. It is not voracious to satisfy its wants - it devours for the sake of devouring only!”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

Nature

“The rich man never stops his work of exploiting, though he may be utterly unable to assign a reason for his greed. He that has $1,000,000 would have $10,000,000; he that has $100,000,000 would have $1,000,000,000.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

“We see…Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC … they’re all out there saying, look, we need to do something about corporate greed… the way that they were involved with loans… Over the most of the 20th century… you had caps… And then all of a sudden there was deregulation. And when deregulation took place, all of this bad stuff started occurring. You know, Wall Street stole from mom and pop. The economy crashed.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

Mike Papantonio in "Republicans & Democrats Agree, Loan Sharks Need To Be Regulated", The Ring of Fire, https://trofire.com/2019/06/02/republicans-democrats-agree-loan-sharks-need-to-be-regulated/ (2 June 2019)

Way , Bad luck , Moms

“The problem with world hunger is that rich, powerful governments are more than happy to send guns and money to dictators and despots who’ll use food to control their populations and line their pockets. There is no ‘world hunger’ problem. There’s a corruption problem. There’s a greed problem. There’s a gullibility problem....”
“So there’s a corruption problem,” I said. “Point taken. How about if we make a solution for the corruption problem, then? Maybe we could build some kind of visualizer that shows you if your Congresscritter is taking campaign contributions from companies and then voting for laws that benefit them?”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

“What, you mean like every single one of them?”
Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Moon (2014), p. 149 (ellipsis represents a brief elision of text)

Money , Hunger , Law , Food

“Greed. What's more greedy than wanting to take something from someone else that you haven't earned.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

“Just as it is possible to think of water both while thirsty and while not thirsty, so it is possible to think of gold with greed and without greed. The same applies to other things.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

On Discrimination, vol. 1, p. 40
The Philokalia

Water , Thinking

“Sickened by vermin
that feed, in the shade of the good,
on envy, greed, and suspicion,
by the snake-like hissing
of venomous tongues
that fear hate and revile
the mystery of free thought
and upright heart
The spirit would cast aside all deceit,
open his heart to the spirit he trusts,
and unite with him freely as one.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

Fear , Hate , Heart , Envy

“Maitreya will call for the creation of trust. There is no trust between the nations. No one trusts anyone. So no one can do anything. Banks don’t lend as they did before. He will talk about the need for trust, and without it how nothing can happen for the good. And competition of course destroys trust. It is the opposite. Co-operation is necessary for humanity. We are all hooked on greed and competition – and you see the result, we are living it. Every time you turn on your television you hear about firms going out of business, the banks don’t lend and so on. That is the result of competition and greed, and it is folly. Sharing is the only solution.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Quoted in Questions & Answers, Share International https://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2018/2018-10.htm#q-n-a (October 2018)
Share International Magazine

Business , Time

“Millions of humanity believe, ignorantly, that speculation and competition are the best things in life. They bring out the best in a person. From Maitreya’s point of view they bring out the worst in anyone. They bring out all the separation, the malice, the greed, the need to win. They separate humanity because they put brakes on the aspiration of humanity for a better life, and lead us into a super-commercialization which is destroying all life today. Commercialization reduces people to being pawns on a chessboard: they are useless unless they can bring more profits to the company that employs them.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Quoted in Questions & Answers, Share International https://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2018/2018-10.htm#q-n-a (October 2018)
Share International Magazine

Personality , Life , People